Prose

Passage: Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7
Memory Text: Psalm 8:5-6

Have you ever thought about your real worth?

We humans are the most special creations of God among all His creations. We are so special to Him that Jesus once mentioned the worth of a single soul is greater than all the riches of this world (Mark 8:36).

Here are the 4 truths that makes us special to God.

1. Personal Creation: God making us with His own hands

"... then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." - Genesis 2:7

When God created all other things, He just spoke them into being. But when He created man, He did not just say, "Let there be a man." Consider these points:
- He came down to His creation and made the man out of the dust of the ground using His own hands.
- Plus the man is the only creation of God into which God breathed His own "life" (Genesis 2:7).

God actively does the same thing to every unborn child in its mother's womb (Psalm 139:13-16). Therefore, to deprive an unborn baby the right to live is to counteract God's work. To counteract God's work is to rebel against His authority.

2. Mirror Image: God copying Himself in creating us

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'" - Genesis 1:26a

God equally created both the man and the woman after His own image. This image includes (as mentioned in the Full Life Study Bible by Pastor Donald C. Stamps):
- God's moral likeness. We were originally created without sin. That's why oftentimes we feel bad when we do something wrong. That's also why we can relate to God closer than any creature (the innate desire to worship).
- God's natural likeness. God made us as personal beings, each having a soul and a spirit, possessing a freewill, emotions, conscience, and self-consciousness.
- Man SOMEWHAT possesses God's physical likeness in a way that He made man a body, a fleshly form into which the Deity Himself would be embodied (John 1:1, 14) with which He revealed and will reveal Himself (Acts 1:11).

Though created after God's image, a man can never become more than a man. He will always remain a man; nothing more (Isaiah 42:8, Ezekiel 28:2).

Take note that no other creature is made after God's image than man.

3. Divine Stewardship: God taking us in charge of ruling the world

"And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." - Genesis 1:26b

It was the man whom God entrusted to have dominion over all His creation in this world. Take not that it was Adam, not God, who gave every animal its name (Genesis 2:19-20).

But let us also remember that God called everything He created "good". Therefore, since we are the stewards of God's creations, we are accountable to Him for whatever we do to them. What do you think will you feel if you beautifully made a certain handicraft and when you entrusted me to take care of it, I neglected it?

4. Filial Relationship: God creating us to be His children

"... the son of Adam, the son of God." - Luke 3:38

The Gospel of Luke reveals that man was created to be a child of God. God, who is love, has a desire to love someone who WILL love Him back.

But since the fall of Adam, man became a son of the devil (John 8:44). This is the initial effect of sin. "And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death." (James 1:15)

But God, in His love, sent Jesus to die for our sins so that if we believe in him, we shall not perish (John 3:16). Not only shall we be exempted from the very effect of sin, but also we will be adopted by God the Father as His own sons and daughters (John 1:12). Jesus the only way back to God (John 14:6)!

- Shim'onai :D